Maya Brooks
Maya Brooks is a former Cerberus operative who left the organization to pursue her own pro-human agenda. Her true name is unknown; "Maya Brooks" is an admitted alias, and she has used at least three other names while working with Cerberus: "Captain Channing", "Hope Lilium", and "Rasa". Accomplished at infiltration and espionage, Brooks specializes in throwing numerous distractions at her adversaries while she stealthily completes her objectives. __TOC__ Mass Effect: Foundation Mass Effect: Foundation 1 In 2161 CE, a young Maya Brooks worked as a forced child laborer in an asteroid-mining facility orbiting the gas giant Themis, which supplied the majority of materials for the construction of Arcturus Station, and was treated as a boy. While carrying a load of rocks in the mine, she was accosted by the mine's foreman for dropping rocks, and was saved from being beaten by the intervention of a mysterious woman. The woman interrogated the foreman for the location of a man, then killed him and took Maya with her, also assuming she was a boy. The woman had Maya pretend to be her sick child to gain entry to a clinic. While Maya was taken by a doctor for diagnostic tests, the woman slipped away into a staff room. Later, Maya tracked the woman to the residence of a man named Roth and followed her in, avoiding the building's guard. Inside, she encountered a man about to shoot and kill the woman, overhearing their conversation about Cerberus and the man commenting that Cerberus stood for something. Maya distracted the man, allowing the woman to turn the tables. As the woman questioned the man for Roth's location, Maya tried to stop her from killing him, but the woman replied that sometimes the best thing to do was to end it. The man then gave in and divulged that Roth had left the facility. The woman kills him and leaves with Maya. After verifying that Roth had indeed left the facility, the woman made her way to her ship and prepared to leave. As she unlocked the ship, it greeted her as "Miss Brooks"; Maya asked the woman if that was her name, but she ignored the question. Maya then begged to leave with the woman pleading for a ride to anywhere other than the facility, but the woman firmly refused, explaining that she worked alone and Maya would only end up captured by her enemies and forced to betray her. She reassured Maya that since she had been clever enough to follow her to the Roth residence and get past the guard, she would eventually manage to escape the facility on her own. As the woman turned to leave, Maya shot her in the back, mortally wounding her. Maya revealed that she was actually a girl, and like the woman she had learned to not trust other people, but she had hoped that she could trust the woman for once. Leaving the woman behind to die, Maya boarded the ship. Years later, Maya gained a meeting with the Illusive Man, identifying herself as "Rasa". He asked her why she chose to join Cerberus. She replied that a man she once knew had said that Cerberus stood for something, and she wanted to stand for something too. Mass Effect: Foundation 2 An older Maya, who was still going by the name "Rasa", was reminiscing about lessons learned from her impoverished childhood while she was reviewing a dossier about Urdnot Wrex. She expected a call from the Illusive Man regarding the mission ahead but received Kai Leng instead. Leng informed her that the boss was busy and there has been a complication: her mission was to turn Fist, an agent of the Shadow Broker, over to Cerberus, and someone was hired to kill him. Rasa told Leng she already knew that someone was Urdnot Wrex, and assured him she had it covered. Posing as a maintenance worker, she made her way to Fist's residence while the distractions she set up sprung around the krogan bounty hunter. While the krogan was busy being stalled and Fist was away attending to business, Rasa infiltrated Fist's apartment with little effort, peeked into his files, and learnt that Fist was bought off by another party instead of Cerberus: Saren Arterius. Rasa thought up an alternate plan: she faked a call to C-Sec and claimed that a crazy krogan outside her apartment was threatening her. The plan was to get Fist to change his mind while Wrex faced more time-consuming obstacles, but Leng, who had been in comm contact with her the entire time, neglected to mention that Fist was already outside the door. She concealed herself and made sure Fist was alone before confronting him, and with an M-5 Phalanx in hand Rasa interrogated him for answers. Saren's offer was simply better, Fist claimed. She then gave Fist a choice: deal with Wrex, or side with Cerberus and earn her protection. Rasa later shared an elevator with Wrex, the latter having failed to apprehend Fist. She empathized with the krogan's complicated day, and together they faced the C-Sec officers she summoned to take care of Wrex upon arrival at the ground floor, with Wrex grumbling beside her. During her mission debrief with the Illusive Man, Rasa reported her progress with the data she retrieved from Fist's terminal, and the Cerberus leader praised her both by the quality of data she acquired and the means by which she got it. The Illusive Man posed the question why she let both Fist and Wrex go, and she had separate answers for it. She wanted to learn more about Fist's connection with Saren, and she can't get that if he's dead. She's expecting Wrex to take care of Fist before the human compromised Cerberus, and added that she liked the krogan: he's straightforward, honest, and uncomplicated. Mass Effect: Foundation 3 Rasa was yet again undercover at the Citadel the day after Saren's attack on Eden Prime, dyeing her hair red and wearing glasses. At the same time, Leng was on Eden Prime interrogating an Alliance soldier as to what happened. From hers and Leng's findings Rasa noted that a Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams was involved in the fighting. Leng assumed she was KIA, only for Rasa to inform him that Williams was alive and on the Citadel. Leng thought she was bullshitting him, though Rasa assures him she wasn't lying - not on the case, anyway. Rasa inquired about his plan on the captive and Leng replied he's going to make it look like the soldier died with his squad. Rasa thought it unusually decent for the assassin though Leng clarified it was just a matter of expedience. Rasa then approached Williams pretending to be an Alliance psychologist named "Captain Channing", wanting to give her a psych evaluation on the pretext that it's standard procedure. The Gunnery Chief was initially reluctant to say anything, though a combination of Rasa's coaxing and her own introspection eventually made her divulge a lot of things. At the end of the interview, Rasa informed Leng to confirm that it was the geth that attacked the colony, which Captain Anderson failed to enter in his report. Leng questioned what Saren and the geth would want with a Prothean Beacon. As Rasa had no answers, Leng tells her return with him to report to the Illusive Man. She insisted she stay a little while longer, as she heard that Commander Shepard was exposed to the beacon, but was refused. Rasa then remarked that she'll have to meet Shepard another time. Mass Effect: Foundation 4 Rasa was reviewing dossiers of Commander Shepard's crew when Kai Leng came knocking at her quarters, informing her she missed a debrief. She had lost track of the time going over the dossiers, unable to comprehend what the Illusive Man sees in the subjects they're about. She was frustrated in how everything has apparently gone to shit ever since Anderson relinquished command of the SSV Normandy. Shepard's crew now seemed to be assembled from a ragtag bunch of misfits: "broken" cases like Ashley Williams and Kaidan Alenko, and they even stooped to recruiting aliens to help their cause. Rasa was of the opinion she's just wasting her time on the crew when it should be Commander Shepard Cerberus should be focusing their efforts on. Leng jabbed at her failure to meet with the Illusive Man, but Rasa was in no mood to humor him. The assassin departed with a reminder not to miss the next debrief, and Rasa assured him she won't. Mass Effect: Foundation 5 On a holo-meeting with the Illusive Man approximately a month after the attack on the Citadel, Rasa voiced her concerns on having Shepard under greater scrutiny. The Cerberus leader, however, revealed that humanity's first Spectre was already dead. Rasa asked the Illusive Man how she could be of assistance on investigating the matter, though he already had other people looking into that. Instead, he handed her what he deemed to be the most important task of her life. At the conclusion of the briefing Kai Leng dropped by for a conversation with her. Rasa shared she was shocked at learning about Shepard's demise and once more remarked on Leng's cold-bloodedness when the assassin expressed indifference on the matter. Leng offhandedly mentioned he was off on a mission, and Rasa immediately assumed he was the one looking at Shepard's case. As Leng denied the assessment and exhibited a similar lack of information, Rasa took to needling the assassin over his own usefulness to the organization while trying to figure out who among the other operatives might be important enough to be sent after the dead Spectre. Mass Effect: Foundation 7 A short-haired Rasa was accosted by Kai Leng for yet another mission in service to Cerberus. A training facility was under attack, and the Illusive Man dispatched them both to haul the perpetrator in for questioning. The target had biotics off the charts, as Rasa learned from the given dossier, and she doubted her purpose for being included when Leng declared he would be taking the operation seriously. In response, Leng told her she would be handling the aftermath analysis of events. A short time later at the training facility, Rasa took notice of the Blue Suns ships parked in the hangar. She did some further digging into the target and suspected that she was formerly of Cerberus, one of the biotic kids the organization trained in the early years. A mercenary contingent and two operatives for just one girl must mean Cerberus and the target were related, Rasa reasoned, as the agents continued to search for Jack. Soon enough Rasa and Leng found Jack just after she's done dealing with some Blue Suns soldiers. The Cerberus duo prepped their weapons but proved no match for Jack's biotic onslaught. More Blue Suns swarmed the scene, forcing Jack to make everything in the vicinity fly. Rasa begged the biotic to stop as she clung on one hand, but Jack was set on killing everyone. Subject Zero's rampage was only halted by a blow to the head. Rasa called out to the Blue Suns to clarify what they're doing when they started to haul Jack off, and one of their number responded that Jack would have to be ransomed by the Illusive Man. Rasa grudgingly accepted the situation as Kai Leng started to recover near her, remarking that the Illusive Man won't be happy with it. Leng thought the mission a waste of time, but Rasa was uncertain: at the very least, the Illusive Man will know Subject Zero's worth and capabilities. Mass Effect: Foundation 8 Rasa took the brunt of Kai Leng's anger in the aftermath of their botched mission to capture Jack. She had to step off from piloting their shuttle to argue with Leng, who was freaking out. She tried to qualify Subject Zero's neutralization as a success and that lying to the Illusive Man would be pointless, but Leng accused her of reveling in his humiliation. Before she could frame a reply, they were interrupted by message beeps. At the Minuteman Station, Rasa was ordered by Miranda Lawson to grab her gear from the shuttle and report to her at the station's labs ASAP. She tried apologizing to Leng, who was told to report to the Illusive Man elsewhere, but the assassin just warned her of unspoken threats should they ever have joint missions again. Moments later at the labs, Rasa learned about the Lazarus Project from Miranda and what it aimed to achieve. Leng had her convinced they were both in serious trouble after the last debacle, but those fears were quelled when she heard that much of the intel she gathered on Shepard had been invaluable to the project. Miranda advised her not to be concerned with Leng: muscle might be necessary, but information is far more powerful. Continuing the tour, Rasa glimpsed the Commander's clone for the first time, and beyond it screens of everything Cerberus knew about Shepard. She inquired about the clone's development, though Miranda informed her that it wasn't what the Illusive Man wanted. He wanted the real thing, still on the operating table, and Rasa saw parts of the restoration procedure from afar. Rasa's part in the project was then revealed: she was to steal the Commander's classified records from the Spectre offices at the Citadel. Rasa listened to Miranda elaborate on the mission back at her office. She was handed a disc containing sensitive but outdated Cerberus secrets and was told to bring it to the Spectre Tela Vasir. She assumed the Spectre would hand over the records until Miranda replied otherwise: Vasir can let her into the offices, but it was still up to her to extract the data. A few days later on the Citadel, Rasa lightened her skin and donned a close-cropped blonde wig for the op. Disguised as a Cerberus defector, she reached out to Vasir and requested assurances for her safety. The Spectre offered her sanctuary in the Spectre offices and left her there while she went out to verify the disc's contents, as anticipated. Rasa went to work on a terminal, but she was taken off-guard by Vasir's return with armed reinforcements. Rasa offered up the standard excuses in her initial interrogation, claiming she was only paid to do the job and knew nothing above her pay grade. The situation took a turn for the worse when Vasir had a guard nullify her fake skin color with an injection, as well as personally removing her wig. Her disguise destroyed, and with her prints and DNA obtained by the Spectre, Rasa had no choice but to hear Vasir's terms. The asari gave her back the disc with the data she originally came for and wanted it delivered to the Illusive Man. A virus tainted the information and should force the Cerberus leader into giving anything Vasir wants. Rasa's choice was either prison or compliance, and Vasir advised her to make the right one. A few hours later at a Citadel bar, Rasa reflected on the hassles of her day. A salarian bartender gave her a free drink courtesy of an anonymous gentleman, and she chugged it without thinking. When Miranda commed in, Rasa reported the mission as accomplished, but she found too late there was a chemical spiked in her drink. She abruptly severed communications and attempted to get out of the bar, stumbling on numerous patrons and knocking out the glass from a nearby volus. Rasa hazily reached the Presidium before collapsing. A turian C-Sec cop held her up for public intoxication, disbelieving her claim that she was poisoned or drugged. In her foggy state, she heard someone taking responsibility for her actions and blacked out momentarily. Her anonymous benefactor turned out to be Thane Krios, who was also responsible for spiking her drink in the first place. Rasa struggled to form questions and excuses but the drell curtly refrained from giving her real answers. With Thane's knife bared at her presence, she blurted out that she didn't want to die in that situation because she realized she had never lived her life. The drell considered her words and decided to believe her, apologizing for his actions and praying for her. Figures from Rasa's past flooded her psyche, and she remembered bits and pieces of the things they told her. Rasa made it back to Minuteman Station on a gurney a few days later still weakened from the ordeal. She tried to warn Miranda about the tainted disc while receiving medical treatment, though the other operative assured her she has got it covered. Mass Effect: Foundation 9 Following weeks-long recovery and a basic checkup, Rasa's doctor cleared her for duty after two more days. Rasa was impatient to get back to her feet, but the doctor emphasized the toxin's unfamiliarity before giving her space to converse with Miranda. Rasa wasted no time in singling out Thane from the list of Shepard's potential recruits that Miranda gave her before her near-death experience. Miranda instead ordered her to focus on the dossiers as they have become a priority, expecting a full report on all candidates by the time Rasa gets out of bed. Sulking at the indifference, Rasa accepted the datapad on Mordin Solus and assured Miranda she'll have the report sooner, adding "bitch" after the other agent's departure. Mass Effect: Foundation 11 Rasa was incensed that Miranda put her on indefinite medical observation. She knocked out her attending orderlies and headed straight to Miranda, demanding some answers. Miranda rationalized it as a safety precaution, but Rasa was unconvinced, going as far as to ask if she was a prisoner. She chafed at having her talents wasted on mere research and deemed herself field-ready, but Miranda revealed she knew about Rasa's clandestine and repeated efforts to access Lazarus Project files. Rasa was agape for a moment as she realized the implications. Rasa promptly went back to dossier-building and deemed Zaeed Massani's account interesting. She stroked the tank containing Shepard's clone, wondering about Cerberus' plans for it. Mass Effect: Foundation 12 Rasa's knowledge about the Lazarus Project grew to dangerous extents as her desk job stint went on, enough to attract Miranda's suspicions. She became aware of the inordinate surveillance placed on her, but showed no outward awareness of it. For the time being, she spent her time reviewing the information gathered on Thane Krios. Mass Effect: Foundation 13 In 2160 CE, two years after the First Contact War, Rasa was a mere kid being taught to steal. Her handler, an old man named Brocktun, shaved her hair to pass her off as a boy miner despite her objections, citing the fact that he paid for her as reason enough to follow his orders. She was treated poorly at the hands of this man. During one looting operation one of the miners caught her picking things off his locker. She tried to run, but the man caught and threw her across the room. Using a knife Brocktun gave her, Rasa gouged the man's left eye the next time he approached her. Rasa returned to Brocktun emptyhanded and exhausted. She recounted the day's events, saying she didn't mean to hurt the man, but Brocktun turned livid and started beating her. The fact the miner may have survived meant a greater threat of discovery in Brocktun's eyes. Eventually, Rasa has had enough and stabbed Brocktun in the chest, leaving him where he lay. 24 years later, Rasa took the lessons of her childhood to heart. She has finally decided to break free of Cerberus, also aiming to take Shepard's clone with her. An opportunity came when it was decided that the clone project was to be terminated. Rasa took a LOKI Mech with her to the clone lab, intending to have the clone handed to her cleanly by presenting the authorization order, but one of the people present recognized her. Rasa switched to a backup plan: the LOKI pulled out an M-358 Talon, she drew out her M-25 Hornet, and both of them started shooting at everyone else present. To slow down efforts at stopping her, using skills she learned from Miranda she planted a crippling virus that affected surveillance and various other systems at the Lazarus Research Station. For added measure, she subverted the programming of all station mechs: when Miranda's security team caught up to her at an airlock, the LOKI and YMIR Mechs of the team turned on Miranda's human troops. The chaos bought her enough time to finish suiting up for a spacewalk to her waiting Kodiak shuttle. With the clone in a pod being towed by her LOKI, Rasa nearly made it to her spaceship when her mech was hit by a sniper round. Miranda proved tenacious enough to continue pursuit. Rasa questioned Miranda's blind allegiance to the Illusive Man, as well as the point of throwing away the clone, finally venting her resentment at being treated like a puppet and deeming Cerberus' strings-attached policy insufficient to secure her loyalty. Her LOKI sacrificed itself to distract Miranda at a critical juncture, enabling Rasa to load the clone's pod into the shuttle and fly off. At an undisclosed location elsewhere, the place where she slew Brocktun, Rasa kept the clone in seclusion. While it slept, she reflected upon the lesson of mistrust learned from the original Brooks, claiming she was right. Besides promising to make the clone better and more loyal than the original, she also vowed that both of them will forge their own destinies and stand for something. Mass Effect 3: Citadel Commander Shepard meets Brooks in Ryuusei's sushi bar on the Citadel, where she presents herself as a twitchy and talkative Staff Analyst in Systems Alliance intelligence. Brooks warns the Commander about an unknown party targeting and hacking into the Commander's personal accounts and records. Brooks doesn't have much time to explain before mercenaries attack the restaurant looking for Shepard. Brooks is captured by one of the mercenaries but Shepard manages to recover a weapon and rescue her, only for Brooks to soon after jump in front of a bullet meant for Shepard. Brooks is separated from the Commander when mercenary gunfire ruptures the glass floor, sending Shepard falling to a lower Ward level. Brooks, who recovers from her injury almost immediately, apparently through taking a heavy dose of medi-gel that leaves her jumpy, manages to make comm contact with the Commander and guides Shepard through a C-Sec lockdown to a Cision Motors skycar lot to be picked up by C-Sec. The C-Sec shuttle meant to extract Shepard turns out to be a mercenary trap, although the Spectre manages to hold them off with some squad assistance before Joker arrives with Brooks to extract the beleaguered team. Brooks and Shepard then return to the Commander's Personal Apartment where they meet up with the rest of the Normandy crew and Brooks gets to explain her involvement in length. Apparently, her tracking program "Mr. Biscuits" (named after her cat) detected a breach in Shepard's classified files, hence her trip to Ryuusei's to warn the Commander. Shepard wants to inform Armando-Owen Bailey of the situation, but Brooks thinks the investigation should be kept in-house to avoid other people becoming targets of their enemy. Liara T'Soni uses her resources to identify Shepard's attackers as belonging to CAT6 and discovers that they were sold weapons by a casino owner named Elijah Khan. Brooks overshares her training in zero-emissions tech, recalling her an incident at Op-Int where she had to disable a shaving cream-filled bomb with tweezers, leading to Shepard "volunteering" her for the task of infiltrating Khan's panic room. As she claimed she took a desk job explicitly not to get shot, yet she got shot anyway trying to warn Shepard, she expresses her objection to the idea until Shepard assures her they've got her back. Despite a couple of security setbacks, Shepard, Brooks and Shepard's plus one manage to sneak into Khan's panic room, only to find him dead and his terminal wiped. Brooks muses it could be her fault since she tripped an alarm earlier, but a Mysterious Figure projects on Khan's screen and confronts Shepard. Afterward, the team recovers Khan's data drives for further analysis back at the apartment. EDI lets Brooks handle the decryption work on the drives so she can improve on her skills. While waiting, Brooks flatters the team, claiming they are legends to the rest of the Alliance, are the kind everyone looks up to, and that their camaraderie seems to be their secret weapon. Shortly afterward the decryption succeeds and Brooks finds evidence that point to a lot of purchased war material, including mechs. Glyph chimes in, as apparently Shepard's Spectre code is used to access the Citadel Archives, alerting the team to their adversary's location. Brooks seems to think Shepard can't bring everyone, so Shepard declares the operation all hands on deck. Brooks joins the rest of Shepard's crew in a counterassault on the archives where the mysterious identity thief is revealed to be Shepard's Cerberus-created clone. The clone manages to get the real Shepard's team to temporarily stand down by taking Brooks hostage, leaving the group soon afterward and letting its mercs deal with them. Brooks fights off these mercs with Shepard's teams Mako and Hammerhead, claiming to be ignorant of what the former is during the ensuing battle banter. Later while chasing the clone through the archives, Brooks claims to have been shot and pleads for Shepard's assistance over comms. The Spectre's squad runs straight to a booby-trapped iridium vault, and once the clone steps out to gloat Brooks' true allegiance as its accomplice comes to light. Her prior behavior and even her accent is revealed to be an act: Brooks does not actually work for the Alliance and is in fact ex-Cerberus, the one who put together all of the dossiers for Shepard's suicide mission. She was disgusted that Cerberus would look to aliens for help and left the organization to avoid becoming indoctrinated like the Illusive Man. Brooks orchestrated the mercenary ambush in the Wards, but never intended for the real Shepard to live once she obtained their Spectre code. When Shepard didn't die, course corrections were applied in the form of Brooks shooting Khan before anyone else reached him. With the clone's theft of Shepard's identity complete, Brooks and the clone seal Shepard, the squad, and the rest of the Normandy crew in the iridium vaults, leave them to suffocate to death, and commandeer the Normandy SR-2. Shepard's squad escapes and fights off more mercenaries in a bid to retake the Normandy. On the CIC, upon receiving word that Shepard has boarded the ship, Brooks advises the clone to personally defeat the real Shepard and accompanies it to the armory below. A firefight ensues in the cargo hold, eventually ending with Shepard and the clone hanging off the edge of the open boarding ramp. While the Commander's squadmates help Shepard up, Brooks chooses to abandon the clone who falls to its death. Brooks is then arrested but secretly begins hacking her bonds. She reverts to a mocking version of her Staff Analyst persona, claiming to be more than happy to cooperate with the authorities. If Shepard tries to persuade her to go into custody peacefully, Brooks tries to get Shepard to admit that part of them wanted someone like Brooks "looking up to the legend." They had some laughs, and possibly "more someday". If Shepard doesn't respond, Brooks successfully hacks her restraints and tries to run for it, but one of Shepard's squadmates shoots her down. If Shepard will have none of it, Brooks thinks they're afraid for their life if she escapes, but Shepard clarifies they're actually pleading for hers. Brooks takes a moment to process it before standing down. As she's being hauled off by Steve Cortez, she remarks that the clone wouldn't have let her live. If Shepard is hung up over her betrayal, Brooks continues feigning innocence and naivete with the Maya persona, telling them they'll miss her when she hacks her restraints and bolts out. Brooks doesn't get far; a squadmate or Shepard shoots her in the back and Shepard even muses that they won't "miss" at that range. Trivia *When choosing one's squad for Silver Coast Casino: Infiltration, Brooks will be listed as having the abilities of Incendiary Ammo, Fortification, Frag Grenade, Carnage, and Alliance Officer, with no weapons available and a default costume bonus of Shields +25%. She is not, however, available via the pause-menu's Squad option. *Miranda Lawson claims to know Maya Brooks only in passing and as "Hope Lilium" in Mass Effect 3: Citadel. Mass Effect: Foundation, however, depicts the two interacting extensively in the Lazarus Project, with Miranda even referring to Brooks exclusively by her "Rasa" alias. *The Latin phrase "Tabula Rasa" means "clean slate". "Rasa" has a tendency to change her name and identity. *Even if Shepard chooses to save Brooks, she does not become a War Asset. de:Maya Brooks pl:Maya Brooks ru:Майя Брукс Category:DLC Category:Citadel Category:Systems Alliance Category:Cerberus Category:Ex-Cerberus Category:Recurring Characters Category:CAT6